I'm sure things like this have been asked a thousand times before, so please just ignore this if you find it boring/irritating, and also accept apologies in advance for any opinions you don't agree with.
Background: I have used Solaris (and SunOS before that) for many years both at home and at work, mainly on Sparc boxes but for the last few years on a laptop too. For various reasons I am now using just one laptop (a Thinkpad X61) at home, at work, and while travelling.
Things got to a point where I could not really live with Solaris any more: too many things just *don't* work. Although mostly used for "serious" purposes, I occasionally like to be able to play solitaire, watch a dvd, look at something on youtube, etc. The final straw with Solaris was setting up a 3G wifi dongle: it took me hours to get it to work and was never straightforward. Following a suggestion on a forum, I tried a live ubuntu disk and pretty much everything *did* work, and configuring the 3G took about 5 clicks and 1 minute.
I didn't really take to Ubuntu and am currently using Debian with xfce. Most stuff works most of the time, and using the laptop either on its own or plugged into a docking station (different at home and work) is fine.
So, maybe I should just leave it, or maybe I'm a masochist, or something, but: at some level, I find linux a bit irritating. It lacks tools I'm used to, I update x and y ceases to work, I find solutions on forums that are only a couple of years old and have long since ceased to work, I'd rather have ufs, etc etc. Solaris was pretty bulletproof, easier to configure in many ways, less keen to hide internals, often easier if you knew at least roughly what you were doing. Just my humble opinion.
So, after all that pre-amble, my question is: can FreeBSD give me, I suppose, the best of both worlds? I know from occasional past forays that it's much closer to the sort of unix world I am used to. I've done a quick install of the base system on an old laptop I have and getting that, basic hard-wired networking and X working seemed as straightforward as any other OS. I'm currently installing kde on that machine, just to see what it's like as I have never tried it, though I might stick with xfce if I use this longer term.
Will things like mobile and wireless internet work, will I be able to watch a DVD or check out things on youtube, and will it be possible to do these things without many hours of tinkering with arcane bits and pieces that are then really hard to reproduce? I don't mind doing a lot more manual configuration than something like ubuntu expects, so long as there is a good chance that I will get there in the end. Can FreeBSD do what Debian can do??
I don't want to end up in a situation where most things work, but not one of the key things I really have to have!
Background: I have used Solaris (and SunOS before that) for many years both at home and at work, mainly on Sparc boxes but for the last few years on a laptop too. For various reasons I am now using just one laptop (a Thinkpad X61) at home, at work, and while travelling.
Things got to a point where I could not really live with Solaris any more: too many things just *don't* work. Although mostly used for "serious" purposes, I occasionally like to be able to play solitaire, watch a dvd, look at something on youtube, etc. The final straw with Solaris was setting up a 3G wifi dongle: it took me hours to get it to work and was never straightforward. Following a suggestion on a forum, I tried a live ubuntu disk and pretty much everything *did* work, and configuring the 3G took about 5 clicks and 1 minute.
I didn't really take to Ubuntu and am currently using Debian with xfce. Most stuff works most of the time, and using the laptop either on its own or plugged into a docking station (different at home and work) is fine.
So, maybe I should just leave it, or maybe I'm a masochist, or something, but: at some level, I find linux a bit irritating. It lacks tools I'm used to, I update x and y ceases to work, I find solutions on forums that are only a couple of years old and have long since ceased to work, I'd rather have ufs, etc etc. Solaris was pretty bulletproof, easier to configure in many ways, less keen to hide internals, often easier if you knew at least roughly what you were doing. Just my humble opinion.
So, after all that pre-amble, my question is: can FreeBSD give me, I suppose, the best of both worlds? I know from occasional past forays that it's much closer to the sort of unix world I am used to. I've done a quick install of the base system on an old laptop I have and getting that, basic hard-wired networking and X working seemed as straightforward as any other OS. I'm currently installing kde on that machine, just to see what it's like as I have never tried it, though I might stick with xfce if I use this longer term.
Will things like mobile and wireless internet work, will I be able to watch a DVD or check out things on youtube, and will it be possible to do these things without many hours of tinkering with arcane bits and pieces that are then really hard to reproduce? I don't mind doing a lot more manual configuration than something like ubuntu expects, so long as there is a good chance that I will get there in the end. Can FreeBSD do what Debian can do??
I don't want to end up in a situation where most things work, but not one of the key things I really have to have!
